Following the success of its debut feature, Nimona, Annapurna Animation is ready to launch its next phase of movies.
Multiple projects are now in the works as key creative positions have been put in place, including a new project from Nimona co-director Nick Bruno and the next title from Ice Age director Chris Wedge, EW can exclusively report.
Among other intriguing items on the agenda for the division are plans to adapt video games from Annapurna Interactive, the gaming branch of the indie studio. First up is Stray, the award-winning adventure game from the developers at BlueTwelve Studio.
Baird went on to say that there’s “something so emotional” that the creators are trying to capture when adapting the game to film. BlueTwelve, he explains, described the game as having a “sort of ‘hopepunk’ vibe,” a narrative concept that optimism is a form of resistance. “I love that term, hopepunk,” he says. “I think, if we are going to do this adaptation justice, this is going to be the first and greatest hopepunk movie that’s ever been made.”
Though the division heads won’t reveal what other games they’re considering for adaptation, Millstein does explain why Stray was the title they went to first.
“First off, it is just wildly popular,” he says. “People engage in the game for a variety of reasons, and I think for us at Annapurna, working with different creative people, it’s a puzzle. What is it about this game that is so popular? Then the question is, how do you adapt a game into longform storytelling that is incredibly respectful to the game itself and the audiences, but then also is film worthy? The process of that is always part of the challenge.”
While I personally really enjoyed playing Stray, I’m having a hard time imagining it as a straight narrative.
While the setting was immersive and gorgeous to look at, and the gameplay was quite enjoyable; the narrative was quite light. The cat cannot speak and doesn’t have much motivation beyond going home. Though the robot companion does have motivations and the ability to speak, it is not the main character of the game.
Regardless, I will be interested to see how the movie turns out.
I imagine it being done similarly to Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal. I doubt a Hollywood studio would back a feature film done in that way, but I think if it was, it could be faithful to the game, impactful, and beautiful.
i actually had the same reservations, but as i thought about it more, i think stray actually makes more sense as a movie. that way you can give the cat more personality and drive, rather than trying to capitalize on people’s desires to be a cat and do cat things. the game really shoehorns in the narrative, especially past the first half. it would have worked better with a more personified creature imo, since the game really ends up being driven by the narrative rather than the whimsy of the player (which is what i would have expected from a game whose focus was on doing cat things)
Giving the robot more of the spotlight is the obvious route. Make it the main character and its relationship to the cat the dramatic backbone.